The Vampire Diaries: Damon's Existential Crisis
by Lucretia Debrev
Summary: It's December 15, 1953. Damon gets into an argument with Dr. Whitmore and pays dearly for it. Damon wonders, should he stop fighting Dr. Whitmore and let him have his way?


He should've just walked away.

If he'd only walked away, told Enzo he could find Wes Maxfield and kill him on his own. But no, Damon had only his revenge to keep him going.

_If all I have is revenge then what's the point? What's the point of going on if everything comes to nothing? If I can't keep the people I care about safe, if they end up dying, if I fall in love only to be rejected, then what's the point in living? _

Damon didn't have much else to do except think. He was chained to a chair, in a living room of a small house with Enzo. Enzo was trapped inside the house with him. The difference in the two of them? If Damon got free of his chains he'd kill Enzo in a heartbeat.

_Why not kill him? He's nothing but trouble for me. Nothing but trouble. Then again maybe Enzo should just kill me. Elena will never take me back, Bonnie and Jeremy hate my guts, I'm not wanted and I never will be in Mystic Falls ever again. And why move on? There's no point in doing that. Move on for what? For the sake of moving on? That's folly...But then again, what else is there for me? _

Damon hoped Dr. Whitmore would let him recover, considering Enzo had bled out died during an operation. Damon's body still burned from the vervain and his mind was still foggy. The pain was consistent to the point he felt numb. He'd gotten little sleep because of the pain and when he had the chance to sleep, he couldn't.

Damon heard the familiar creek of the door to the basement. Then the light was turned on. Damon squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light.

"Good you're awake, 21051. What about—"

"No. He's still dead—sir." Damon had gotten used to Dr. Whitmore calling him 21051 but he couldn't stand it when he called Lorenzo 12144.

"Fine," Dr. Whitmore sighed, "I have to run some errands—get more blood and vervain so you'll have the day off."

"Thank—alright."

Damon couldn't believe what he'd almost said. He'd almost thanked him—genuinely.

"You're welcome. Here's your blood. See you later."

Damon nodded and took the shot glass of blood.

Damon looked at Enzo and whispered his name but he didn't stir; Damon drank the blood.

_Wait a minute if we're running low on blood then did I just drink Dr. Whitmore's? No, he would never give his own blood to me. That'd just be sick. I should try to get some rest. I haven't a good night's sleep in months. _

Dr. Whitmore's errands didn't last long. When he came back he was in ill mood.

It was a small, uncontrollable error. Dr. Whitmore had just drained Damon of almost all of his blood and as Dr. Whitmore stuck Damon with a needle of vervain, he flinched; causing Dr. Whitmore's needle to fall to the ground.

"Now see what you've done? You've gotten vervain everywhere and I just mopped this floor!" But that wasn't all, in Dr. Whitmore frustration, a blood bag also fell onto the floor and broke.

The loss of blood made him lightheaded so that he had little to no control over what he was saying. Damon sat up on the gurney, his hands and legs still chained, but there was leeway enough to put his feet over the side and sit so he could steady himself.

" Well it's not my fault you're a dunce." Damon muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing—sir."

"That's what I thought. You're very argumentative, I see why Joseph liked Stefan more."

_You've got to be kidding me! Even Dr. Whitmore prefers Stefan to me! Has the world forgotten the little angel killed his own father?! _

"_Don't_ talk about my brother like that."

"He's a vampire. I'll talk about him anyway I want to."

_I will rip your head off for saying something like that. He's my brother! If anyone's going to insult him it's going to be me! _

"You know it's dangerous to be you."

"Oh really, how so?" Dr. Whitmore said with a laugh.

"Because when I'm dead or Enzo's dead. You'll always look over your shoulder. Even when you're an old man. Because we'll always be with you. Waiting for the perfect moment to take you down with us to hell. We will be the demons of your past that come back to haunt you. Every shadow you see, every noise or whisper you hear in the night will be us."

"I feel no guilt for the work I do."

"Now you don't, but you will. Trust me, I've been around for eighty nine years, I think I know what I'm talking about."

Dr. Whitmore's smile was gone, "What do you feel guilty for?"

Damon looked Dr. Whitmore in the eye and said, "I feel guilty for not having one more cigarette before you bought me."

_I know he's been trying to stop smoking…. _

Dr. Whitmore stuck another needle into Damon's neck, "I don't think I'll worry about my demons. In fact, I think I'll walk hand in hand with them when I'm older, you know why? Because there will be a subtle difference between us. I'll be alive and they'll be dead. I'll be a human and they'll still be just _demons_."

"Ah, doctor, that is where you are mistaken. Don't you know? There are no such things as demons there is such thing as Hell though. Hell is not a place. Hell is people. Hell is me, hell is yourself. If what you're doing is noble then why don't you have an official lab? Why don't the lovely, smiling people we see at your party each year ever come down here to see what work they're funding? Why don't they? They don't come down here to see what you're doing because you scare them. They leave you to do the dirty work, and the fact that you can shows them just how different you are from them."

"That's not true."

"Yes it is, and don't lie. I know you despise them as much as I do. In one sense, this lab is your cage. Eventually the things you own, own you. You are your own hell because despite the fact that you hate having to work down here with creatures like me, underneath the world, you continue to because the people upstairs promise you money and credit. Yes they give you credit at your New Year's party every year, but they make up for it by saying you're a little queer, a little like the creatures you work on."

"I am not like you, 21051, I will never be like you." Dr. Whitmore said savagely.

"You're right, you never will be because you're worse."

"I am nothing like you. The things I do, I do with purpose."

Dr. Whitmore was about stick another needle into Damon's neck when Damon stopped him.

"You just keep telling yourself that, Doctor. You just keep telling yourself that."

Damon heard a crunching sound; he let go of Dr. Whitmore's hand and panic ran through him. Dr. Whitmore just sighed, emptied out his coffee cup in the sink and picked up a scalpel.

"You realize you have no right to talk to me the way you just have, don't you? You've just spoken out of term and you must be punished for it. I suppose it isn't such a bad thing, you know. There have been experiments I've held back on for quite some time because they were considered unsafe, but now that I think about it, you're a vampire, what's the worst that could happen? And these experiments have been tested on humans in the mad houses—why not here?"

"You know there is no version of this where you come out on top, there is no fairy tale ending. There is _no exit_, no way out of here." Dr. Whitmore, said looking around the room. Dr. Whitmore was talking more to himself then to Damon. He sounded as tired as Damon felt.

For a moment, Damon did feel sympathy for Dr. Whitmore because he knew that every man felt guilt, and it was impossible to deny its presence. Damon thought, For Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do. Damon wondered for a brief second if Dr. Whitmore was a demon. He wondered, Does the devil torture his own servants? Do they become truly evil when they are so bored? When they search for purpose and do terrible things and try to justify them and say it was done with purpose? Do they feel guilt? Is Dr. Whitmore just doing this in search of purpose?

But the moment of pity left Damon as quickly as it came, as he remembered the first time Dr. Whitmore cut out his eye for talking too much.

Damon sat back down on the gurney and stared off into space. He knew what was coming, he knew that when Dr. Whitmore had said 'punishment' he meant the worst pain he could possibly inflict on him. Damon felt as if he could sob, his breath grew short and his hands shook slightly and then went numb.

Dr. Whitmore took Damon's hand, cut his wrist, and let his blood flow into his coffee cup. Damon didn't fight him because he knew fighting was now useless. Damon's body burned from the vervain injected into his system so the cut didn't hurt. But they both knew what it symbolized. Damon hurt Dr. Whitmore, but it didn't matter because the cruel irony was that it could still be undone. And if rebellion could be undone, if words were pointless, then why fight Dr. Whitmore? Why even try? What was the point?

_The point is…at least I will have tried. The day I stay silent is the day he will have won the right to call me 21051. _

When it was over, Damon had been on the gurney for two weeks straight. Dr. Whitmore's anger enabled him to conduct experiments he'd originally decided were too dangerous to perform even on a vampire. For good measure he filmed every experiment and surgery.

In the course of two weeks Damon was Dr. Whitmore's first vampire to go through shock therapy, Lysergic acid diethylamide and surgery. In the course of two weeks Damon lost both of his eyes and one kidney. As part of Dr. Whitmore's punishment, after his left eye was removed, a blanket drenched in ice cold water was placed over him while a window was left open. Damon knew it had to be below freezing outside.

Damon realized he had stopped shivering and he began to laugh until his laughter became a sob.

_"Ex toto corde paenitet me quod tibi displicui: miserere mihi peccatori. Rogo te, ne derelinquas me. Amen." _

Damon came back to life and died three times in the first night and stopped praying allowed after the third.

* * *

"You know this was punishment for what you said to me two weeks ago."

"Yes…."

"Are you sorry for speaking out of terms, 21051?"

Damon didn't respond.

"21051?"

Dr. Whitmore pulled out his recorder and said, "It is December 15, 1953, test subject 21051 has just died, for the fifth time this week, of hypothermia. This is Dr. Whitmore of the Augustine Society, signing off."

The minute Dr. Whitmore was gone, Damon opened his eyes.

_I've got him. When I broke Dr. Whitmore's hand, I turned on his little tape recorder; the whole world will know or think they know, that Dr. Whitmore is using the society's money to keep us down here for himself. And if this doesn't work, there will _always_ be the Other Plan. Leave one member of Whitmore's family alive to keep his name, wait until that person starts a family, kill everyone in his family except for one person and leave them to continue the generation and so on and so on. What could go wrong? _


End file.
